nerves strung like copper
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: A plausible rendition of the climactic battle of My Brother's Keeper, as per the Sacrifice AU. Jazz POV. / Birthday fic for sapphireswimming. (And now that she's seen it, cross-posted to FFN.)
1. to the wire

In any given tense situation, Jazz is not going to be the one to start a fight.

Jazz is small and perky, and very rarely even clumsy. She has the kind of body that could charitably be called "slender" but is more realistically "twiggy." She dresses modestly and practically – button-up shirts, long skirts with deep pockets, in every shade of blue she can find. (Dad does all the sewing and mending, which is how she can afford long skirts and full sleeves in the first place.) When dragged off to some blasted wilderness by her myth-chasing parents, or otherwise occupied with tasks that require free movement, she swaps her skirts for trousers and points anyone who argues at her mother.

Jazz really wishes her mother was here right now, and not just because Mom could break a man's neck one-handed. She's not completely sure that Mom could help, anyway; because there is Spectra too-tall in the dimming light orange light of a fall sunset, eyes glittering red like her snappy tunic-dress, red like spell-glass. Nothing like human.

Jazz shoves the goggles into place, and foggy half-there images sharpen and reveal:

Her little brother, not disappeared into the aether but radiant, clothed in the colors of the ruins and a long-dead god. (Or not so dead. ...he always did have a talent for digging up strange things.)

And sharp, sharp claws digging through his sides, tearing past cloth through flesh. That the color he bleeds makes her eyes hurt, even through the reflective red glass, doesn't matter. Danny is Danny is hers to protect, and she is going to get him back safe, and she is going to make them pay.

Of all the many, many roads her life could have taken, Jazz never in her worst nightmares dreamed that someday she would be all that stood between her little brother and a dark spirit trying to eat his mind.

(And steal his place as _the local deity_ , but she's just... going to shelve that little revelation. Not for long, just until she's alone with the door barred and a thick stack of fresh note-paper on hand.)

Carefully, as silently as she can, Jazz searches through the side pockets of her bag until she finds what she's looking for. It's just a small jar, dull gray glazed in green and white. She unscrews the top, and spools of shining metal burst out and twine around her limbs. She has to fight not to shake. The wires twine through her hair, binding it back (for one sharp moment she thinks to herself that maybe she should have cut it short, there's _no time_ ) and hook into the leather loops of her red-glass mask.

The wires burn where they brush bare skin, leaving numbness behind. She's never used it before, never actually thought she'd need to, but she recognizes the symptoms of magical overload from Mom's studies. She also recognizes that this feeling could easily be mistaken for invulnerability. For all that this armor will protect her from the side effects of the Peeler (her father's naming sense is truly unparalleled) it's still just a shell, thin and flimsy and easily pushed aside. Her greatest ally against these creatures is surprise.

Jazz huddles in the shadow of a crumbling wall, radiant in twisted wire and caged light. She presses against the wall, tests her weight.

Well, then. Shock and awe, she can most definitely do.

Her left hand digs into the rain-pitted stone as she launches herself up and over. Her right foot (don't plant yet) touches earth and she lets her momentum spin her around until she's facing the enemy. Jazz sets her stance and _fires_.

Bertrand comes crashing down like a sack of hammers, toothy bear shape melting away into so much unidentifiable muck. Oh, ew.

Jazz hates the use of magic, the necessity of prayers, but she can't discount how utterly lifeless the youth of Amity Park have grown in these past weeks. Were she an ounce less a concerned citizen, she might have missed the warning signs that heralded a deep depression. ...or, quite possibly, possession. (Wounds of the spirit, down to the soul.)

She's not entirely certain now how much of this apparition is Danny and how much a spirit, but if there is _anything_ left of her little brother then she will defend him to her last breath. ...she really hopes she won't have to.

From how quickly her armor's initial power boost is fading (and taking that headache-inducing green light with it) she has maybe half a minute before Spectra's horrible-nasty aura can reach her again and-

( _alone alone always alone no one likes you little girl you know better than that sad pathetic little creature poor misguided little prodigy let's see you_ _ **burn out**_ )

-if that was how it felt when Spectra wasn't even focused on her, Jazz really couldn't afford to get hit.

(Don't think about it, don't even let it cross her mind.

 _Danny, broken and crumpled on the ground. Danny, a spiraling cloud of light only recognizable through spell-glass. Danny, her little brother the broken god._

She _hates_ her parents sometimes. And Spectra grows stronger with her victims' pain, so- Not thinking about it!)

The woman is screaming, rattling off curses that Jazz can see fizzling out against her armor. Where they hit, the metal flares briefly, then dulls. She's not going to last.

She waits, lets Bertrand shift snake and then strikes. Her pocketknife goes through his neck, iron reflecting light (it almost looks like it's glowing). She keeps running.

Bertrand screams. Spectra screams. Her hands crab out like claws, and something in Jazz's mind whispers _poison_.

Jazz steadies her grip, feeds every scrap of attention she can spare into _breaking Spectra_ and fires again.

If that first unfocused shot was a torch, this is midsummer-noon sunlight focused through a lens. Not as fire but as a blade, _many_ blades – dozens of tiny razors and awls and scalpels that fix themselves under Spectra's skin and _pull_. It's gruesome, really, knowing that this monster could pass for human. (Might have been human not long ago, or centuries ago. If the evil witches of children's stories are real, who's to say they can't be as old as those stories?)

There's nothing human about her now. She's a negative space, a screaming pit in the half-light of the alleyway. (Now Jazz knows why Mom said not to look through red-glass without supervison. She's pretty sure the memory of Spectra's ghostfire eyes is going to scar.)

Spectra was aging and then she was old, and now she is black not-fire and claws and hate. The armor is out of power, and Jazz is out of ideas, and _no_ _ **not Danny!**_

There are certain weaknesses common to all spirits - as much as humans cannot quite grasp their existence, so spirits never understand human power.

Jazz believes in Danny.

(Not that he isn't often wrong, or that he can't lose, but that he will always _always_ find a solution to whatever mess he's gotten himself into. It's how he might get hurt along the way that scares her. (It's that she couldn't save him soon enough that hurts worst.))

A net of white-blue light tears open the evening, closing over Spectra's claws and Bertrand's reforming fangs. It dissipates, leaving a child-god and a human girl to explain the absolute mess left in the wake of this day's chaos.

The spirit turns to the girl (who he most certainly does not recognize, and therefore could not possibly be related to in any way). "Are you all right-" he breaks off the sentence with a choked noise. It could have been ice cracking, a stick of chalk snapping in her hand. It could have begun her name.

Jazz presses her lips together, breathing deeply and slowly. (Her right side is going to be one big bruise tomorrow, she can feel it.)

"Wait, no, that's not what I meant." He shakes his head sharply, as though clearing mental cobwebs. (As though she hasn't seen Danny do that a hundred times.) "You should see a priest about this. There's no telling what kind of spiritual grossness they might have left on you."

Okay, Danny knows perfectly well that the only temple anywhere nearby has been defunct for centuries. (For a moment, she doubts – not her brother, but her own memories. Perhaps he left, and she didn't see it?)

The next thing she knows, she's alone. The armor is now nothing but a heap of copper weighing down her clothes, and-

She can smell smoke. Probably from the misaimed fireworks. It was definitely time to left.

(And found Danny and checked him for injuries and made absolutely sure that Spectra had made no wounds that would not heal, because-

well, it wasn't like she could get at Spectra now anyway.)

Later, Jazz will go to the temple. There she will find her brother's handprints inked into the walls.

(It doesn't matter. He's safe now. And if he isn't, she's going to make it so.)

Jazz has never been one to start a fight, but she isn't nice enough to ever leave one unfinished.


	2. afternote

Nose-deep into a treatise on treating phobiae through sudden and repeated exposure to their root causes, Jazz almost didn't notice her little brother trying to initiate conversation.

Almost. She would never pass up a chance to actually talk to Danny, as opposed to throwing every bit of mind-healing she could get her hands on at him and hoping something stuck. In hindsight, that clearly hasn't been working. She needs better methods.

He chuckles sheepishly, his gaze sliding away and down. Also in hindsight, Danny is clearly exhibiting nonhuman behaviors and has been for months. How much did she miss, wrapped up in her fruitless do-gooding and nosy-parkering? How did she not that for some reason whenever the local malicious spiritual entities started acting up, Danny would run away, an impossible fog would roll in, and living lights would fill the sky.

One thing's for sure, she is never leaving the house without a pair of spell-glass goggles again, not ever.

Oh. He's holding something out.

"What is this?" she asks. It's a plain brown bag, some kind of cloth she's not familiar with. (Ooh... that may be worth investigation.)

He grins. "I got you a present. Congratulations on being the most dedicated student at Casper School!"

Liar. Jazz is well aware (after the fact) that Danny couldn't have cared less about the festival, or about the honor of being chosen to speak for the school at the rally.

Still, considering what a very close call that had been... "Thanks."

She picks apart the knot, pulls the top open and pulls out a small jar. It's a little longer than her hand, with a long neck and a hinged top like some of their parents' finds.

In fact, this looks exactly like something her parents dug out of the old temple last year. "Danny, did you take this from the dig without _documenting it?_ You should know better than that!"

"What, no! I got the pattern from that funny vase-thing Dad brought home last month. And then I got some help from my friends to make this, so technically it's _kind of_ from all of us, but it was my idea to make you one."

Jazz dimples. "Aww. You're so sweet, little brother."

She does not ask whether or not he had one. If this was anything like the jar Spectra and her familiar were trapped in, the answer would not be _yes_ but _how many?_

She turns it over in her hands, studying it. Hmm, odd mechanism under the lid. Best not to mess with it until she knew more about its construction. "Are there runes pressed into this?"

Danny blinks. "Huh? Oh, those aren't runes, they're..."

She raises an eyebrow, preparing her next question.

"Oh, would you look at the time!" he blurts, voice going distinctly pitch-y. "We should get going, um, to the kitchen. Don't want to be late for dinner!"

And he all but races out of the room.

Bemused, Jazz tucks the new gift into a drawer.

How nice that he trusts her.


End file.
